The Liberals' Woman Problem. Newsflash: it's not women who are the problem

The Coalition’s Woman Problem, so named after a cascade of incidents, including accusations of sexist bullying, a staffer impregnation scandal, a bonking ban, a sexual harassment allegation and a crisis in female representation, has broken ranks.

She obviously got tired of waiting for her party to move, so she moved herself. She hit them where it hurts: square in the balance of power.

Scott Morrison now governs a firmly minority government, commanding 74 of the 150 seats in the lower house.

Illustration: Matt GoldingCredit:

These are the numbers, the raw material of power, which is the only language politicians really understand.

More important is what Morrison, a former marketer, might call “brand damage”.

Banks rose in the House of Representatives at about 12pm, just as Morrison stood in the Prime Minister’s courtyard, going for maximum statesmanship, to announce a pre-election budget with his Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg.

But any thunder he hoped to muster was stolen.

The coup against Turnbull, Banks told the house, was “led by members of the reactionary right wing ... MPs trading their vote for a leadership change in exchange for their individual promotion, preselection endorsements or silence”.

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“Their actions were undeniably for themselves, for their position in the party, their power, their personal ambition, not for the Australian people who we represent,” she said.

Equal gender representation in Parliament was “an urgent imperative which will create a culture change”.

Across both parties, respect for women was years behind the business world.

“Often when good women call out or are subjected to bad behaviour, the reprisals, backlash and commentary portrays them as the bad ones; the liar, the troublemaker, the emotionally unstable or weak, or someone who should be silenced,” Banks said, in what was a rare example of a politician reading the public mood.

Importantly, it was principled - precisely what Australians want when their trust in politics is at historic lows.

Following the Turnbull coup and the ensuing nastiness, five women complained about bullying.

Of them, four have either lost their positions or quit them - Banks, Lucy Gichuhi, Ann Sudmalis and Julie Bishop.

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Only Kelly O’Dwyer kept her role, but she is not happy. The Minister for Women reportedly told her colleagues that Liberals were widely regarded as "homophobic, anti-women, climate-change deniers".

Backbencher Bishop is also proving ungovernable. On Tuesday, she contradicted government policy by urging her party to do a bipartisan deal with Labor on the National Energy Guarantee. She made her statement via the front page of the Australian Financial Review.

These problematic women are not going quietly.

It really is starting to look like the Liberal Party’s Woman Problem is a misnomer.

Because more and more it seems like it is not women who are the problem.